The good folks at Open Source Defense beat me to the punch, so you may have already heard about this chapter I published recently in a book on Understanding America’s Gun Culture.
The chapter is a systematic analysis of the portrayal of women (and men) in The American Rifleman over the 100 years from 1920 to 2019. You can download a PDF of the chapter HERE.
As with my other publications on advertising in The American Rifleman and Guns Magazine, my son is a co-author of this work, taking primary responsibility for the data analysis and visualizations. The second author is a 2020 graduate of Wake Forest who worked on this project as a Senior Honors Thesis in Sociology. Riley is currently a 2L at George Washington University Law School (*funny story about my meeting Riley at the end of this post).
As you can see in the image above, the chapter begins by discussing an advertisement placed by the Peters Cartridge Division of Remington Arms.
Odd coincidence: the same month this chapter was published, I had lunch with John Johnston of Ballistic Radio fame at Cartridge Brewing in Maineville, Ohio. The brewery is located at an old Peters Cartridge Factory which has been turned into apartments.
If you’re interested in the role of women in American gun culture, have a read and let me know what you think!
*Funny story about Riley Satterwhite: Sociology is a female-dominated major at Wake Forest University (and elsewhere), so in a Sociology of Guns class of 16 students, I often get only a couple of men. One year I was so desperate for male students that when Riley contacted me to add the already-full course, I decided to go against my policy of not over-enrolling. The fact that Riley talked about having a competitive shooting background was an added bonus. Imagine my surprise on the first day of class when Riley turned out to be a woman. Since when is “Riley” a woman’s name?
As this book chapter suggests, everything turned out for the best. I enjoyed having HER in class that semester, and working with her the following year on her Senior Honors Thesis in Sociology which contributed so much to this chapter.
Gun Culture 2.0 
Thank for the great read. I am sure you have seen this in some incarnation or other: https://www.nraila.org/articles/20210920/harvard-researcher-about-half-of-new-gun-owners-are-women?fbclid=IwAR1Dv_a_HoyS9Z-nwvK5Yz0URYpHltqZuh8FmoYdL-DgCYXrkPA07c2kFDA
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“Gibson explains that ‘hollow point’ bullets are designed to expand upon impact, and that an expanded bullet ‘has its shaft intact, but the head is folded back into a mushroom.’ This leads him to conclude, ‘A perfectly expanded bullet bears some resemblance to an erect penis.'”
One presumes that James William Gibson has never in his life seen an erect penis if he’s making a comparison between an expanded hollow point bullet and an erect penis. Someone tell him that they can solve that problem with Viagra now.
“‘Sophisticated magazines show graphs contrasting bullet expansion and penetration, often accompanied by drawings of wound channels that look very much like vaginas'”
So he’s never seen a woman naked before, either?
I feel bad for him.
I really do.
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[…] David Yamane, Riley Satterwhite, and Paul Yamane, “A Woman’s Place in Gun Advertisements: The American Rifleman, 1920-2019,” in Craig Hovey and Lisa Fischer, eds., Understanding America’s Gun Culture, 2nd Edition (Lanham, […]
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[…] UPDATED TLDR (2/16/2022): The research discussed below, co-authored with Wake Forest University graduate (and current George Washington University Law School 2L) Riley Satterwhite and my son Paul Yamane (Wake Forest ’16), has since been published as a chapter Second Edition of the book, Understanding American Gun Culture. […]
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[…] time in The American Rifleman (1918-2017) and Guns Magazine (1955-2019), and a third study of the portrayal of women (and men) in ads placed in The American Rifleman […]
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[…] The American Rifleman. I replicated that study using Guns magazine. And most recently examined the portrayal of women (and men) in the Rifleman. If we expand from advertising per se to the marketing of Gun Culture 2.0, then I can add my study […]
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